FlashPaper in 2008: Dead or Alive?
As my first post of 2008, I thought I would ask this question and see what people thought.
Since Adobe took over Macromedia, FlashPaper seems to have been put on the backburner or quite possibly extinguished all together. Adobe already has the pdf format and now seems focused on a new xml-based representation of pdf, the Mars Project. With CS3, Adobe did not include FlashPaper with any of the suites and has pulled FlashPaper from Contribute.
You can of course still buy FlashPaper 2 from the Adobe store, but it is still v2 and does not work with Vista or Intel Macs. I have heard a few rumors that FlashPaper might be included as an export option in Acrobat, but so far thats just that... a rumor.
So what do you think... will FlashPaper be revived in 2008 or has it gasped its last dying breath?
What are you seeking... what are you trying to accomplish?
The Macromedia FlashPaper printer driver hasn't had many resources devoted to it the past few years... not much change there.
(The Mars project seems quite different... a way of creating PDF to be rendered in Adobe Reader, as opposed to a way to display many types of documents in Adobe Flash Player.)
What would you like to do better...?
jd/adobe
I've always liked Flashpaper's ability to display a printable document which can be loaded, UI and all, into an existing Flash application, which can be controlled externally by the application itself. PDF doesn't cut it, and I'm sorry, but Share really misses the point as a FlashPaper replacement in my view.
For such purposes, I don't want a popup to display a PDF. I want something like this AS2 app I designed in 2006: http://www.mosesznaimer.com/ (click Press Clippings > Thumbnail)
I want to be able to do this in Flex without all the AVM1/AVM2 communication nightmares.
That is what Flashpaper is for. And that's what Adobe is slowly killing with its inattention. Please Adobe, make a FlashPaper 3 with AS3. It won't kill PDF, honest.
Have you tried Adobe's "Share" technology (labs.adobe.com)?
From waht I saw I think they use something like FlashPaper there. For sure, it's rebuilt from scratch but it looks a lot like FlashPaper.
I concur - I love FlashPaper's capabilities and thought it to be an awesome add-on for Flash apps. I hate that it looks like it's going to fade away...
@John: "What would you like to do better...?"
First, I'd like FlashPaper to be supported on Vista and Intel Macs. I'm sure Linux people might like support as well.
Reasons why FlashPaper should still be supported:
- allows for somewhat seamless integration of documents in Flash and gives Flash control over the document. (AIR will allow this type of control over pdf documents, but it is nice to still have similar control in Flash).
- filesize... typically FlashPaper documents are smaller than pdfs.
- speed... if FlashPaper was rebuilt from the ground up in AS3, I can only imagine the benefits that would be seen.
- under the Adobe umbrella... now that FlashPaper is an Adobe product, so much more information could be shared between the Acrobat team and the FlashPaper team to improve the capabilities, yet still maintain the separate benefits of pdf.
Currently there is no way to display PDF content within Flash content, with Flash Paper, I cannot help my clients publish their contents in SWF, and I will develop a Flash interface to put them together online (without AIR)
The ideal would be that Adobe provide an AS3 library that renders PDF content; otherwise, Flash Paper still has a lot of values.
Flash Paper lives on in Share (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/share/)
Share is a free web-based service that allows you to easily share, publish and organise your documents.
Think of an online CMS where documents can have permissions set and then be embedded (within your site), viewed, previewed and printed via the hosted Flash Paper service.
Whilst it's not as 'open' as the Flash Paper of old, i'm pretty sure it meets all of your requirements (outlined above).
It's definitely worth checking out.
Matt Voerman
Adobe
@Matt:
Share is interesting, but as you said, doesn't seem to be as 'open' as FlashPaper.
Are there any other tools (like search, etc) that can be added to the menu? It doesn't seem like you can search within the page at all.
Can you control the document with ActionScript? ...Like page number, zoom level, etc?
With the work that has been done on converting a version of FlashPaper to AS3 (as has obviously been done for Share), would it really be hard to release FlashPaper as a separate product?
Let's be real clear about one thing: Share is not "FlashPaper Redux"
Share can share documents other than printable files, but its widget is not a standalone SWF like FlashPaper swfs are. In fact, the Share widget interface sucks, functioning more like a chopped-off-at-the-knees document preview with hardly any of the functionality of a FlashPaper swf.
If I want a sharable document, I'll use Buzzword or Google Docs. If I want a print-ready SWF with its own interface, which has the advantage of being a CMS-manageable file, I'll use FlashPaper. FlashPaper also has a printer driver which allows me to create fp SWFs.
The two ideas could merge if Adobe played its cards right, but in its current incarnation, Share is not FlashPaper by a mile. I wish they'd upgrade it for AS3/FP9.
Hi guys. Have you seen this: http://print2flash.com/index.php
I can't believe Adobe pulled out the rug from under us by not continuing FlashPaper... My company has built their our own CMS for serving up this type of content wrapped in a Flash interface. Is all this development time and money, not to mention all the hardware upgrades we made recently to Intel Macs going to be wasted? I'm definitely looking into print2flash!!!!
Are... "all the hardware upgrades we made recently to Intel Macs going to be wasted?"
What?
Why would this have anything to do with FlashPaper?
Go enjoy your Intel Mac.
I've made the switch from PC and am not planning on looking back in the near future.
Mark: Flash Paper doesn't run on Intel Macs nor Vista (so I'm told) at the moment... utter crap!
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb401484&sliceId=2
It seems that so far only a few people has discovered the enormous potential of rendering pdf's in flash player.
Just visualize a pdf rendered in a Flex or Air app. 3 lines of code!
This is the missing piece at the flash player. Macromedia did an awsome job with Flashpaper.
Microsoft Silverlight will soon be able to render Word documents. Got it? Adobe, you have both, PDF and FLASH. Put them together.
How are sites like scribd.com / docstoc.com / issue.com converting and displaying PDF's in their flash viewers? I would love to know.
I'm mainly concerned with standalone CD-rom apps that run inside closed networks - to this end I'm finding the end of support for FlashPaper a bit worrying. FP2 never really felt like the finished article (the print driver has some weird issues, and the interface is awkward to skin) so I was looking forward to a more polished version with CS3, something more like scribd.com's iPaper.
Launching PDFs from the app simply isn't a good enough solution for my clients. I think Adobe have really dropped the ball on this one.
hi guys,
Have you seen eCatalog at www.Scene7.com a sister concern of Adobe. Check the demos, I want something like that does any one have any ideas.
thanks,
Hi,
I've developed an open source project resembling FlashPaper. Take a look at FlexReport here.
It's in an early stage of development and I'd really appreciate any feedback on how you think it could be improved.